by Ariel M. Goldenthal

You told me that the ocean held your family’s secrets for centuries and that the rope tethering us ashore could fray without warning. We danced along the edge of the icy water, your hand in mine, smooth rocks coarse against fresh cuts on the soles of my feet.

You said the stairs were too steep; the electrical, too old for me to be alone by the sea. You didn’t tell me you’d be the nightmare worse than the wind-scraping of oak tree branches against shutters.

Now the house keeps all my secrets and more than the remnants of your pain.   

* * *

ARIEL M. GOLDENTHAL is an associate professor of English at George Mason University. Her work has appeared in The Citron Review, Fractured Lit, Exposition Review, and others. Read more at www.arielmgoldenthal.com. 

by Angela Zimmerling

that was us

          spiked hair and black eye-liner
          plaid and chains
          our faces
          made pale with talc 

          no nukes
                     in acid rain                 
                     we raised the black flag 

         no future
         in the shadow
         of the bomb

         david bowie was our god

         we posed like dolls
         on street corners and on benches 

         searched
         for holes in the layers 
         of our sky
         while the rain-forests burned 

         wore our rage
         like broken hearts
         and cut ourselves
         on the shards
         of the earth
                             
​                      we lived
                      for the drums’ beat
                      a moment’s breath in the light
                     
         we lived to dance

* * *

ANGELA ZIMMERLING is a former journalist who works in poetry, fiction and illustration as well as in non-fiction.  She lives on a small subsistence farm with her husband and their beloved animals.

by Chris Tattersall

In days gone by, family meals were obscured by the smog of tobacco. Three generations dining together, with just a damp rasp from deep in the lungs of Pete’s father to break the silence. Everyone being passive to its significance.

In later years, Pete was exiled to the garden, whether it be the home or beer variety, to enjoy a cigarette and time with his own son.

Now head of the table, Pete was comforted by the three generations gathered. They ate in silence, only to be disturbed by his son’s cough, a damp rasp from deep inside his lungs.

* * *

CHRIS TATTERSALL is a Health Service Research Manager who lives with his wife Hayley and Border Collie in Pembrokeshire, Wales. He is a self-confessed flash fiction addict with some publication and competition success. He also hosts his own flash fiction website.

by Louella Lester

No one lives above us, but there is a woman who is part of the refugee family that lives across the hall. When she is there alone her screams sometimes escape. Slide right under our door where they wait for translation.

* * *

Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of Glass Bricks, contributing editor at NFFR, and is included in Best Microfiction 2024.
​Instagram: @louellalester  
Bluesky: @louellalester.bsky.social    

by Paul Lewthwaite

I taught mathematics, but dabbled with him.
When the affair ended, no formula could encapsulate his rage.
The police were useless.
I withdrew from life; silent anger bubbled in my shell of shame.
A year later, I tracked him down.
Subtracting guilt, an equation arose that I could solve.
Fatally.

* * *

Paul is a retired physician living in Scotland with his wife and a small, but all-powerful cat. Occasionally he writes stories, some even get published. Paul's fledgling (and sadly neglected!) website can be found at When Can I Call Myself a Writer?

by Anne Howkins

Sea and sky are indecipherable—at night there’s a moonlit line that might be the horizon. Sometimes the flood laps at the weather girl’s bedroom window, seductively shush-shushing that it means no harm. Sometimes it growls the anguish of the drowned.

Without power or paper, the weather girl records her observations in knots. She’s ransacked the house, harvesting anything that can be unravelled, combed, spun, twisted, until every surface is strewn with something like rope, and the wardrobes and cupboards gape empty.

She’s woven and knotted pressure, windspeed and rainfall into whirligig clusters. Her fingers weep blood as the malevolent sky mocks her furious recording. On days when the heavens are silver, not cast iron, when the winds are gentle, yet deviously warm, she allows the ropes to divide. She threads them with rings, necklaces, beads and buttons, treasured memories marking love she hopes isn’t lost. When the barometer falls, again, again, and the house begins moaning, she plaits the strands back together, securing everything precious. She weaves her own undoing into the tapestries, until her limbs feel empty, ready to hold something again, hold her husband again.

At night she wraps herself in her knotted yarns, caressing, letting her fingers explore the chasms she’s seen, she’s created. Sometimes she burrows her nails deep, finds the day her husband left. When her fingers stroke the remnants of love, her heart untethers, her lungs loosen and she weeps, letting the rhythm of the endlessly cruel rain rattling the roof rock her back and forth.

She leaves on a night when the moonlit line is more than a dream. She spools ropes into a sail, launches herself towards the east, hoping her forecast is accurate and the grasping hands of the drowned keep to themselves.

Hoping there is something dry out there.

* * *

Anne loves the challenge of telling stories in very few words. Her stories have appeared in print and online at WestWord, Flash 500, Reflex Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, National Flash Fiction Day, Lunate, Strands International and Bath Flash Fiction.

by Christy Hartman

I grate a teaspoon of nutmeg into the bowl; preparing Finn’s favourite cake is a rare reprieve from my burden. Winter-fever picks off more villagers daily, snuffing them like Mass candles after the Saints are beseeched. 
 
My throat is raw, eyes red-rimmed from hours wailing for wee Orla Murphy. Finn had slouched on the cottage’s porch with the other men. Futility and grief hung thick in the air. The women inside met my keening with their own cries. My vigil only ceased when the child’s spirit drifted through the open window. I retreated to my home, hidden beyond the mist.
 
I’m reaching into the oven when despair’s veil descends again. I shrug on my cloak and succumb to the pull, wild hair flowing behind me, untamed as the river that dragged me under, sealing my fate. Back then I was Clodagh, devoted fiancé; now I am only Banshee. 
 
I feel his essence fading as I approach the cabin, his fear twisting into me. Fever radiates through the open door. My should-have-been mother-in-law kneels at Finn’s bedside. I writhe above the cabin; my guttural screams shake the walls. When his tortured body finally succumbs, his soul soars past. I give chase, crying out as he slips from view, into the fog shrouding the moor. 
 
Cloves and cinnamon scent the air around my house. I pause at the window. Finn is there. My Finn. I weep with self-serving relief. Crossing the threshold, I am eternally reunited with my love.

* * *

Christy Hartman pens short fiction from her home between the ocean and mountains of Vancouver Island Canada. She writes about the chasm between love and loss and picking out the morsels of magic in life’s quiet moments.

by Beth Sherman

​I wake one morning, after uneasy dreams, to find myself transformed into a lesser, long-nosed bat. Nights, I hang upside down in your attic or flit through your garden, lapping nectar from bee balm. Endangered. Despised. With my pointy ears, short tail and brown fur, I look harmless enough, like a chipmunk with wings. I can fly now, hitching a ride on the wind’s back, somersaulting through clouds. My hearing has improved. Sound waves determine your exact location: office, park, bar. I know the name of each girl you bed, each lovely lie you tell. Try to get rid of me. Try. I dare you. Plant mothballs in the eaves. Lay your sticky traps. Plug holes in the roof. I am your shadow now, black as an evening glove, translucent as spilled moonlight. While you sleep, I aim for your hair, my fangs tickling your eyebrows.

* * *

​Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary journals, including 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Tiny Molecules and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and she can be reached @bsherm36 on Instagram, Blusky, or X.

by Marcelo Medone

Flavius hurried towards the two-masted vessel that had just docked.
His friend Titus came down the ramp and they embraced.
“How was the trip? Did you have good weather?” asked Flavius.
“Better than here, for sure,” answered Titus, observing the leaden sky.
That night, burning ashes rained down on Pompeii.

* * *

Marcelo Medone (Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee fiction writer, poet, essayist and screenwriter. He received numerous awards and was published in more than 50 countries, including Canada. He currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.

by Lynn White

Do you scream in tune
in muted monochromes
flat and featureless,
or are your screams
discordant

stark

black and white.
No grey.
No doubt.

A kaleidoscope
of keys and tones
of terrifying sounds

which scream out to me.

* * *

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality.
​Blogspot: Lynn White Poetry
Facebook: Lynn White Poetry

by Nissa Harlow

She died. But her soul didn’t leave her body like it should have.

Maybe it figured the old graveyard, full yet forgotten, was a good place to spend eternity.

So it stayed, clothing her bones, keeping the flesh company as time melted it slowly away.

The camera lies abandoned at her side, images of headstones captured in pixels within. She didn’t take a photo of the stone that caught her heel, nor the one that now stands guard at her head, its age-blunted corner smeared with blood.

When they find her bones, someone will take a picture. It seems fitting.

* * *

​Nissa Harlow lives in British Columbia, Canada where she dreams up strange stories and writes some of them down. Her short fiction has been published in Weird Lit Magazine and 50-Word Stories. You can find her online at nissaharlow.com.

by Paul Lewthwaite

“This isn’t working." My words mix with the thrum of our car. You start to cry, fists pounding the steering wheel, ignoring the road.

Wheels skid on ice—we slide onto a mad helter-skelter of blurred tarmac, looming headlights, and adrenaline.

I come to, dangling upside down, hot petrol fumes thick in the air, the engine running.

Your eyes are shut. Blood trickles from your nose. Outside, distant shouts and the wail of sirens. Flames burst into life behind us.

I call your name. Your eyes flicker open.

I croak out the words I should have said. “Let’s try again.”

* * *

Paul is a retired physician living in Scotland with his wife and a small, but all-powerful cat. Occasional flashes of inspiration generate stories. To his continuing surprise, some get published. Paul's fledgling website can be found at Can I Call Myself a Writer? 

by Lisa Lahey

We don’t act like them, the xenophobes
and kinemortophobes,
each of us with a peculiar
look and a lamentable odour.
We’d love to run among the blue green grass
on frozen glass mountains,
with the cannibals
and their turquoise camels.
There is the one who sheds her skin 
every birthday so she can grow
while the skin melts into the ground.
There is another whose eyes
are moonlit lasers that x-ray every bone
and dream in a demon’s head.
You fear us all, that’s why we stay hidden.
It isn’t fair, shetani,
but what is?

* * *

Lisa Lahey's short stories and poetry have been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Five on the Fifth, Bindweed Anthology, Spadina Literary Review, Vita Poetica, Ariel Chart Review, VerbalArt Journal, and Altered Reality.

by Sarah Das Gupta

Witches steal the milk from cattle,
shapeshift into brown hares.
In the hidden witches’ garden
grow pink foxglove fingers,
yellow clumps of spindly ragwort,
deadly to man or beast.
Witches ride in the Wild Hunt
high in inky darkness,
they form dark silhouettes
across the face of the harvest moon.
In elder trees they hide,
under the spiked blackthorn,
among monkshood and aconitum,
mixing strange concoctions,
bringing certain death and gloom.
Yellow and red flames
consumed them once.
Yet in the darkness of the pinewood,
in that other land under the hill,
they survive, to curse and cure us still.

* * *

Sarah Das Gupta is a slowly emerging poet from Cambridge, UK who started writing a year ago when her mobility became limited to 20 metres. Her work has been published in over 20 countries and she has been nominated this year for Best of the Net and a Dwarf Star award.

by Lucy Barker

I watch you enter. Sunlight penetrates the stained-glass, suffusing your pale cheek.
​
Once, from that pulpit, the Reverend Swales preached forgiveness, his gimlet eyes resting upon me; the sinner of his flock.

I reach out. I have come too close. Startled, you flee towards the headstones encircling those weathered walls. My empty, unmarked grave lies beyond; above the wind-buffeted waves raging far below.

He waits for you by the lych gate.

With venomous whispers I bid you not to go.
​
Convinced it is merely the rustling of trees, you rush inexorably towards him; oblivious of my pursuing shadow.

* * *

Lucy is a retired tutor living on the beautiful South Coast of England, which inspires much of her work. For some strange reason she is fascinated by the eerie and macabre, but that’s another story!